Nabeel Alamgir is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lunchbox, an omnichannel white-label ordering solution for virtual and physical brands like C3, 16 Handles, and Fuku that has raised over $70mm to date. In this episode we’ll talk about the accelerated consolidation in this space from players like DoorDash and Olo, how Lunchbox is able to retarget customers from third-party delivery apps over to direct channels, and the future of virtual brands and the metaverse.
Mar 11, 2022•53 min•Season 2Ep. 27
Michael Suswal is the Co-Founder and Chief Business officer of Standard AI, an autonomous checkout startup that’s raised over $250mm for its AI-based computer vision technology. In this episode we’ll talk about why Standard chose to retrofit vs. compete against existing convenience stores, how c-stores plan to leverage Standard to compete against Gopuff and DoorDash, and the role of the retail experience amidst the growing demand for delivery.
Mar 03, 2022•52 min•Season 2Ep. 26
Chaz Flexman is the Co-Founder & CEO of Starday Foods, a next-gen food conglomerate that leverages best practices from the software industry to quickly test, launch, and iterate on CPG brands like All Day seasonings and Gooey Snacks. In this episode, we’ll chat about the processes that enable Starday to launch new brands for less than 250k in six months, how it approaches online and offline retail, and how the company likens itself more to a Ford than a Unilever.
Feb 14, 2022•45 min•Season 2Ep. 25
Dan Folkman is the SVP of Business at Gopuff, the market leader in delivery of instant needs. Since its start on college campuses in 2013, Gopuff has evolved from selling convenience goods to a selection of over 4,000 unique items ranging from prepared food to liquor, produce, and beauty products, and it’s just getting started. In this episode, we’ll dive into what sets Gopuff apart from newer 15-minute delivery players, its new advertising business, the capital expenditures it has invested into...
Feb 07, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 24
Alice Crowder is the CMO of Krystal, a 300-unit regional QSR operating across the Southeast. The iconic Georgia-based slider chain was acquired out of bankruptcy by Fortress at the beginning of the pandemic and has since transformed itself through the launch of new AI-powered drive-thrus and celebrity-branded locations from former Giants player Victor Cruz. In this episode, we’ll dive into how Krystal A/B tests dynamic drive thru menus, launches new menu items, and is optimizing the drive-thru a...
Jan 21, 2022•52 min•Season 2Ep. 23
Clayton Wood is the CEO of Picnic, an automated pizza station that can improve foodservice labor costs by as much as two-thirds, doubling to tripling four-wall EBITDA margins. Picnic is currently being used on-premise at stadiums and will soon be powering delivery for national pizza chains, convenience stores, grocers, and much more. In this episode, we’ll chat about what makes the pizza industry a unique place for automation, lessons learned from the first wave of startups, and how operators ar...
Jan 14, 2022•56 min•Season 22Ep. 2
Kristen Barnett is the Founder & CEO of Hungry House, a next-gen quick serve concept that curates a rotating selection of virtual brands from up-and-coming chefs and food influencers. In this episode, we’ll talk about the early days of Kristen’s experiences at Zuul and Dig (fka Dig Inn), the challenges behind customer acquisition, and her outlook on the ghost kitchen landscape.
Jan 07, 2022•56 min•Season 2Ep. 21
Liz Moskow is the former VP of Brand Development at Ordermark/Nextbite. In this episode we’ll talk about what it takes to create a virtual brand, how technology companies are deploying these brands across thousands of independent restaurants, and the pitfalls caused by a lack of transparency that has spread wide throughout the industry.
Dec 17, 2021•58 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Jordan Boesch is the Founder & CEO of 7Shifts, a Union Square Hospitality-backed labor management platform for restaurants. In the episode we’ll talk about how restaurateurs are leveraging his technology to improve working culture and their bottom line. More importantly, we’ll dive into how the best operators are managing to attract and retain talent amidst a shortage of 1 million workers.
Dec 10, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 19
George Jacobs is the Founder & CEO of Acelerate, an order aggregator and licensor of seven virtual brands. Jacobs has spent 28 years in the restaurant industry from working at his family’s pizzeria to joining the founding team of DoorDash Drive. This past summer, the startup announced a $14.4mm series A from Sequoia. In the episode, we cover the early days of DoorDash, the role of marketplaces, what distinguishes Acelerate from competitors like Nextbite and much more.
Dec 03, 2021•49 min•Season 2Ep. 18
Mike LaVitola is the Co-Founder & CEO of Foxtrot- a corner store that lives in our neighborhoods and on our phones. What started out as an online warehouse has evolved into an all day cafe and lounge that stocks 1,500 highly curated SKUs from 150 different suppliers. We chat about the flywheel of omnichannel retail, the future of CPG discovery, the role of ultrafast delivery, and much more.
Nov 12, 2021•51 min•Season 2Ep. 17
Andrew Rigie is the Executive Director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance. Andrew was a driving force behind the recent set of NYC legislation that regulates restaurant delivery commissions charged by third-party marketplaces as well as data sharing provisions. We chat about how the regulations shifted from temporary to permanent, the externalities of fee caps, and the latest set of legislation designed to improve the brutal working conditions for bikers in the city.
Oct 15, 2021•55 min•Season 16Ep. 2
Christine de Wendel is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sunday, a new QR-based payment platform that is looking to improve the guest and server experience at restaurants, hotels, bars, and cafés across the world. We chat about everything from the complex merchant payment system in Europe and the US, what it takes to be a consumer-facing wallet, and how Sunday will enable restaurants to leverage valuable customer data to grow their business.
Oct 05, 2021•51 min•Season 2Ep. 15
Barnaby Montgomery is the Co-Founder & CEO of Yummy.com, one of the first online grocers to deliver in 30 minutes or less since 2002. We chat about everything from unit economics of newer quick commerce players to inventory curation and the tradeoffs between full time drivers and gig workers.
Sep 11, 2021•48 min•Season 2Ep. 14
Paul Shapiro is the Founder & CEO of the Better Meat Co, a startup with the second largest mycoprotein fermentation plant in the world. Imagine walking into a Shake Shack and ordering a burger blended with fungi-based protein to form a patty that contains 50% less meat. That’s what Paul and his team are working to build with foodservice and CPG brands for poultry, seafood, and beef products as they also sell their proprietary Rhiza strain as an ingredient for pure meat alternatives.
Aug 24, 2021•51 min•Season 2Ep. 13
Ilir Sela is the Founder & CEO of Slice, a dedicated marketplace and end-to-end ordering solution for over 16,000 independent pizzerias nationwide. Instead of 20-30% commissions of DoorDash and Uber Eats, Slice charges restaurants a flat $2 fee for any order above $10. We chat about everything from the $47bn highly fragmented pizza landscape to the startup’s expansion into building its own POS system and payments solution inside the four walls.
Aug 12, 2021•45 min•Season 2Ep. 12
David Bishop is a Partner at Brick Meets Click, a decade-old consulting and research firm in the e-Grocery space. Each month, David runs a survey that is considered one of the industry’s most prominent benchmarks tracking monthly online sales across delivery, pickup, and ship-to-home. We chat about everything from Amazon’s grocery strategy to the fight between third-party marketplace and traditional grocers.
Jul 27, 2021•59 min•Season 2Ep. 11
Ashwin Wadekar is the Chief of Staff at Gorillas, a new pure-play small basket grocer that delivers items in less than 10 minutes from over 115 dark stores. We chat about everything including the shift in consumer behavior from weekly stockups to on-demand purchasing, Gorillas’ full-time labor model, and sustainability when it comes to food waste and e-bikes. If you’re curious about the battle of convenience and on-demand grocery, this conversation is for you.
Jun 30, 2021•46 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Ellis McCue is the CEO of Territory Foods, a hyperlocal marketplace of personalized, chef-driven meals. Territory has created a distributed network of commissaries in 24 cities across the country that deliver pre-made dishes cooked by restaurants and chefs to customers who don’t want to sacrifice wholesome, healthy food for convenience. We chat about everything including the rise of the micro-chef, the sustainability of delivery, and how Territory leverages 90,000 data points on consumer prefere...
Jun 07, 2021•57 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Chris Baggott is the Founder and CEO of Clustertruck a fully-vertical delivery service that serves over 80 dishes across multiple cuisines throughout the Midwest. Prior to ClusterTruck, Chris sold Compendium Software to Oracle and took ExactTarget public before it was eventually acquired by Salesforce. We chat about everything from how ClusterTruck is able to coordinate its kitchen-to-doorstep time of less than 10 minutes to a host of consumer-facing issues plaguing other delivery companies toda...
May 22, 2021•55 min•Season 2Ep. 8
Pradeep Elankumaran is the Co-Founder and CEO of Farmstead, a same-day online only grocer that delivers a selection of 1500 fresh items at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. As online grocery penetration reached 10% of the total trillion dollar spend in the US, Farmstead is helping traditional brick and mortar grocers open up new delivery hubs that can fulfill 2,000 delivery slots per day. That’s over 13 times what an average store can currently handle. We chat about everything from the ...
Apr 09, 2021•53 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Jaydeep Barman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mumbia-based Rebel Foods, The World's Largest Internet Restaurant with 320 ghost kitchens in three continents powering over 26 native and third-party brands like Wendy's. Founded in 2011 as Faasos, a QSR biryani chain, the startup quickly saw most of its sales go towards delivery with 73% of customers reporting having never visited a store. After realizing that the e-commerce revolution that occurred in books and travel would soon hit food, Faasos quic...
Feb 18, 2021•54 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Matt Schwartz is the co-founder and CEO of Afresh, an AI-powered merchandising and ordering operating system helping grocers save 100s of billions of dollars caused by food waste, inventory shocks, and online order fulfillment headaches within this trillion dollar industry. This was a really engaging discussion about the legacy technology that grocers have relied upon for decades and the trickle down effects when it comes to providing consumers with fresh, nutritious food that doesn’t go bad by ...
Jan 26, 2021•57 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Frank Beard is a retail consultant, speaker, and writer who is a thought leader in the convenience store space and Sam Polk is the CEO of Everytable, a retailer of pre-prepared meals whose mission is to make nutritious, delicious food accessible and affordable in every community. 93% of Americans live within a 10 minute drive of a convenience store, making them incredibly attractive real estate. In this episode, we explore ideas around healthy grab-and-go meals, electric vehicle charging, food d...
Jan 19, 2021•51 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Darcey Macken is the CEO of Planterra Foods, a fungi-based protein subsidiary of JBS, the largest meat processor in the world. In this conversation we discuss why fungi-based proteins are the next wave of the plant-based revolution, how consumers are making decisions about them, and peel back some of the controversies surrounding the factory farming practices of its parent company. Intro song: "It's the S" by Great Ghost: https://spoti.fi/2Yfq1Qv
Jan 04, 2021•42 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Stas Matviyenko is the Founder and CEO of Allset, a contactless, pickup-only marketplace and order ahead technology solution for local restaurants. In this episode we dive into why major delivery marketplaces like DoorDash and Grubhub aren't optimized for pickup or QR ordering, the impact of delivery fee caps on the industry, and the explosive growth of pickup amidst the pandemic. Intro song: "It's the S" by Great Ghost: https://spoti.fi/2Yfq1Qv
Dec 21, 2020•47 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Michael Lastoria is the Co-Founder & CEO of &pizza, a 40-unit pizza chain that recently announced that it will ensure a $15 minimum wage for all employees by 2022. We sat down to talk about everything including the future of livable restaurant wages, suburban expansion, and what lessons fast casual can learn from old school QSRs. Intro song: "It's the S" by Great Ghost: https://spoti.fi/2Yfq1Qv
Dec 16, 2020•47 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Rahanna Bisseret Martinez is an Oakland-based 16-year-old Top Chef Junior alum with experience at four Michelin starred restaurants. Matt sat down with Rahanna to discuss how black voices can be amplified within food media and the current state of diversity within the greater food ecosystem. Check out Rahanna's latest recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/article/cooking-projects-to-entertain-kids/
Jul 23, 2020•46 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Richard Sprague is a veteran technologist from Apple and Microsoft who has done over 600 microbiome tests using skin, nose, and fecal samples over the last six years. His fascination with his gut microbiome has led him to start Personal Science, a personalized nutrition project to help people discover their ideal diet by helping them track their glucose responses to doctor-prescribed meals. We speak with him about the future of gut microbiome testing and personalized diets that are projected to ...
Jun 25, 2020•57 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Bill Stenger is the Director of Food Solution for Knapp North America, the automation partner for Takeoff Technologies which was recently dubbed a Technology Pioneer in the grocery microfulfimment space by the World Economic Forum. Microfulfillment is a disruptive new technology that reduces labor and last-mile delivery costs associated with online grocery by creating small automated warehouses on the back of existing retail stores. We cover everything from consumers’ shopping preferences during...
Jun 25, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 3
